Turn the Key
by RennFlight
Summary: They were the Oncoming Storm and the Bad Wolf, breaking down the walls of time and space. They were Rose Tyler and the Doctor, and they always found their way back to one another.
1. Parting of the Ways

turn the key: part i

She walks in, chattering happily. He closes the door behind her, not saying a word, just listening and nodding. She lets her bags and keys on the clatter; they land with a rattle and a bang. He walks past, whirls around.

"Rose!"

Suddenly silence fills the room, now, and the air is charged with tension. He shatters it, his voice so loud and harsh, his dark eyes angry.

"I can't do this, Rose. I'm not him. I'm me, I'm human! One heart! And - Rose - this isn't how it's supposed to be. You're clinging to memories of him and I'm pretending and I'm never good enough! I'm sorry that humanity was never enough for you, Rose, but I'm sick of always standing in the shadow of who I'm supposed to be!"

He stops abruptly, runs his hands through his hair. His gaze is teary as it meets hers. Rose is shell-shocked, though from his tone or his words it's impossible for him to tell.

"I - I don't - I'm sorry." Her voice is no louder than a whisper, and it's barely that. Her brown eyes lock onto his before looking down, tendrils of blond hair escaping their constraints and falling into her face. From habit, he reaches up to tuck them away before he freezes. His hand slowly lowers to his side. "I ... I never wanted to hurt you," she finally chokes out, then turns away, hiding her face in her hands. "I'm so sorry. I - I'll ... I'll just go." Rose Tyler backs away from the human Doctor, from her shadowy lover. From her make-do. She thinks that maybe, just maybe, it's time to star finding her dreams, her magic, her make-believe. Her Doctor.

The door slides slowly closed behind her, shutting with a click. The brisk fall air washes over him, as he whispers belatedly to now-empty air. "But I'll always love you,"

Post-Journey's End. Companion piece to "Set Fire to the Rain."


	2. Purpose

turn the key: part ii

Rose has a purpose. More purpose than she's ever had before.

She marches down the sidewalk, keys forgotten on the counter, car left in the drive, all the way to a bus station, where she throws herself upon the bench and waits impatiently, tapping her feet against the pavement and drumming her fingers against the wood.

From the bus, she walks again, all the way to Torchwood, where she strides through glass doors and up the stairs, all the way to the dimension cannon on the top floor, where it resides alongside a white-washed wall. She strides across the room, directly to the cannon, and straps herself in. People all around her, people she's not noticed before this point, protest. She silences them with a glare, then barks out her orders. "Power it up. Now."

By this point, the employees are too frightened of her expression to argue. They do as she asks.

Rose last sees her father's balding red head pushing through the crowd, and she smiles serenely. Then her whole world is white lights and extreme pain as every atom leaves the universe behind, and everything is gone. Her eyes close.


	3. Reunion

turn the key: part iii

Rose's eyes snap open, but she's forced to close them when blinding white lights meet them. She slowly eases her eyes open, and recoiles harshly, and it's only now that all her sensations come crashing back to her.

Rose is strapped to a cold metal surface, and there are spotlights focused on her.

She gulps.

"Who are you?" They ask her questions, and she does her best to answer, but they don't seem to like her responses. From what Rose can gather, 'they' are an alternate Torchwood, a Torchwood that doesn't recognize her. Which is, of course, a huge problem, when she considers what that means: she had hopped to the wrong universe. And she doesn't know if they have a dimension cannon to send her back home - either home.

"Rose Tyler, I told you!" Rose is actually starting to get rather frustrated; all she had wanted by switching from one universe to the other was to find her Doctor, but no, she had landed in yet another different universe, and she doesn't know if it was like Pete's World, and doesn't even have Time Lords. She'd actually tried to ask, and the man and woman hovering above her had looked at one another, before the man had disappeared. Rose has no idea what that means, although she's rather grateful that there's one less person to interrogate her.

After a lull in the questions being fired at her, Rose speaks up. "Please, m'am, I'm looking for someone, and I've come such a very long way to find him ..." And then a voice cuts in from behind her, a voice so familiar ... Rose's heart leaps, and she tries to twist around to see the speaker.

"Is that so? And who might the lucky bloke be?'

She needn't have craned her neck so, straining against the bonds holding her to the table. He strides into view, with wild brown hair and those wide dark eyes and if he smile, oh, she knows it'd be brilliant. She herself beams. "Doctor! You're here!" And then it registers that he really isn't smiling to see her, isn't smiling back, and isn't releasing her. It hits her. Alternate universe ... Is this a universe where she and the Doctor never met? Rose feels very cold and small, all of the sudden, under his baleful gaze. "... Doctor?"

"So, you were looking for me. Why?" He tilts his head and Rose remembers that this is how he used to look when he was facing their enemies and she was at his side. And doesn't he look lonely without her there? Isn't this so wrong?

"Be- because, Doctor ... I -" She doesn't finish her sentence. She couldn't very well say 'I love you!' to someone who quite possibly doens't know her, could she?

"Alright, let's try this. Why are you impersonating a dead girl?"

Rose stares at the Doctor for several tense minutes. "Dead?" She finally asks, before shaking her head. "Hold on, answer that in a minute. Doctor, I _am_ Rose Tyler ... just not necessarily _your_ Rose Tyler. I was your companion in a different universe, but then I became trapped in another one, and while trying to get back to the first one - to you - I ended up here." In response, the Doctor reaches inside the pocket of his brown, pin-striped suit and pulls out a pair of 3-D glasses and his sonic screwdriver. At the sight of the first object, her heart clenches painfully, and she remembers the feeling of her fingers slipping from the lever, the wind whipping about her, the Doctor's screams in her ears ... Rose shakes herself out of her memories as the Doctor scans her.

"Well?"


	4. Dead Girl

turn the key: part iv

"You seem to be telling the truth," the Doctor finally admits, and Rose breathes properly again for the first time since seeing him. He uses the sonic screwdriver to unlock the restraints, and, swinging her legs over the side of the table, Rose stands and faces him.

"You said I was impersonating a dead girl. What happened to me? The other me, I mean." The Doctor doesn't meet Rose's inquisitive gaze, but he does respond.

"Well, assuming you know what Cybermen, Daleks and Torchwood are," Rose nods, "All three were in one place at the same time, and to make a long story short, you slipped from a lever and were sucked into the void, for all of eternity." Rose reaches out and takes the Doctor's hand, and he looks up, his eyes meeting hers.

"Nearly the same thing happened to me, and that's why I'm here, really. But, Doctor? I came all this way for you, really." There's a long pause while the Doctor just stares at her, but then that brilliant, gleaming white smile appears on his face and he's pulling her close for a hug.

"Oh, how I've missed you, Rose Tyler!" the Doctor whispers in her ear, and Rose buries her face in his brown coat, breathing in the scent of time and Time Lord.


	5. The Oncoming Storm and The Bad Wolf

turn the key: part v

They leave Torchwood behind, and take off once more, in a rush of wind, and they leave only the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing behind them. And then ... then they were the Oncoming Storm and the Bad Wolf, breaking down the walls of time and space. They were Rose Tyler and the Doctor, and they always found their way back to one another.


End file.
